James Hawkins: PostHog CEO on How to Build a Product Developers Love, Maximize Shipping Speed & Sh*tpost on LinkedIn

The Founder-Led Marketing Show

James Hawkins is the co-founder & co-CEO of PostHog, a dev-first product suite built to help teams build better software, faster. Since launching in 2020, PostHog has grown to 100+ people, 14 products, and a plan to hit $100M ARR by 2026, all while staying lean, shipping fast, and having fun.

In this episode, James breaks down how they got early traction, why building for developers demands a different growth mindset, and what it actually takes to scale multi-product SaaS in public.

Topics we cover in this episode:

- Why PostHog focused on shipping speed instead of sales

- The real story behind PostHog’s $100M ARR target

- Building multiple products at once with 2-person teams

- The value of shitposting (and why it still works)

- How James thinks about brand, attention, and developer trust

- Why they replaced product managers with empowered engineers

- PostHog’s approach to retention, performance reviews & team design

- Growing through word of mouth vs. optimizing for ROI

- Lessons from building and monetizing open source software

- James’ advice on fundraising, agency hiring, and long-term thinking

Perfect for:

- DevTool founders scaling without a salesteam

- B2B SaaS teams building multi-product platforms

- Founders looking to build a brand, culture, and a presence on LinkedIn

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for more insights from industry leaders reshaping B2B SaaS and marketing!

Connect with James:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-hawkins/

- PostHog: https://posthog.com/

Connect with me:

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/

- Website: https://www.project33.io/

- Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03CXzsZp7wdqIRVDcqPTFH

Chapters

00:00 Intro & PostHog’s Mission

01:35 Setting a $100M ARR Goal (When They Had $0)

04:20 Long-Term Thinking & Taking Big Swings

06:05 Why Having Fun Is Strategic

07:12 Shitposting for Brand and Attention

10:00 The Day They Hit Product-Market Fit

13:40 Early-Stage Lessons: Why Velocity is more improtant than Validation

16:00 Pricing Strategy for Open Source Tools

18:30 Competing in Existing Categories (and Why)

21:15 Why Product Engineers Don’t Have Deadlines

24:00 No Roadmaps, No Meetings, No Bureaucracy

26:30 Hiring for Ownership and Accountability

28:15 How They Evaluate Performance Without Goals

30:00 Product Engineer Hiring Criteria & Red Flags

32:15 Talking to Users (Without Forcing It)

34:40 Developer Marketing That Actually Works

37:00 Four Reasons People Choose PostHog

39:05 Brand, Word of Mouth, and Developer Taste

41:10 Being the News vs. Chasing It

43:00 When They Shipped the Wrong Product

45:30 Building a Data Warehouse to Compete with Snowflake

47:05 Why Hard Products Drive Retention

49:00 Letting Engineers Decide What to Fix

51:00 How AI Is Used Inside PostHog

53:15 Fundraising Advice for DevTool Founders

55:20 Final Thoughts & Closing

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/03CXzsZp7wdqIRVDcqPTFH

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnthormeier/

Website: https://www.project33.io/

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